Missing
by Bella7
Summary: The next installment of CSI50. Calleigh gets a push in the right direction from an unexpected visitor. R&R!


Prompt 43—Missing

A/N: Another vignette in my Calleigh Duquesne series—based on a dream I had once regarding a fallen friend. R&R please?

**Prompt 43—Missing**

The clock next to her bed read 3:18am in bright blue numbers—staring her in the face as if accusing her of something. Of what, Calleigh couldn't be sure. She only knew that she'd woken up staring at the date, not the time.

9.20.08

September 20th.

Four years since Tim Speedle had died.

Calleigh rolled to her back and put a hand over her eyes. This was getting old. She had gotten to the point where she stopped waiting for him appear on a crime scene, had stopped looking for him at the bar after work, she'd even deleted his phone number from her cell phone.

But still there was this feeling—this nagging, terrible, lost feeling that overwhelmed her at times. Usually on sleepless nights. On his birthday, on holidays…and every year on the twentieth of September.

She missed him.

Calleigh had never been good at having girl friends. There was something about the work she did that made most of the women she knew anxious; also, she could never truly lose herself in the petty gossip and cosmo-drinking that accompanied 'girl talk'. That was where Speedle had come in. With Speed there was never any kind of pettiness or bullshit. With Speed there had been nothing but blatant honesty and a lot of laughs.

She needed that now more than ever.

With a sigh and the realization she was not going to sleep anytime soon, Calleigh reached over and turned on the light. She sat up in bed and let out a yelp of surprise.

Tim Speedle was sitting at the foot of her bed.

"Oh my God…" Calleigh put a hand to her heart and regarded the specter with a frightened sideways look.

"Calm down, Cal, you're dreaming."

"I am?"

He sounded just like she'd remembered.

"Sure you are," he said with an easy shrug. "You're not crazy."

"I'm not?"

"Not that I can tell," he smiled at her with a sad sort of nostalgia in his voice. "Sharp as ever."

Calleigh smiled back at him briefly. "What are you doing here?"

"Hey, you're still my best friend, right?" Speed looked around as if it were obvious. "You call—I come. Loaded for bear, ready for battle, and…something else that starts with B," he shrugged again.

"But Speed," Calleigh looked around too, "I didn't call you."

"Trust me, Cal, you did." He gave her an expectant look. "So talk. You don't have all night."

"I don't know where to start," Calleigh looked lost for a moment. Four years was such a long time…how much did he already know?

"Start with Delko."

Oh. Well, that pretty much answered _that_ question.

"What about Delko?"

Speed rolled his eyes. Calleigh felt her gut wrench—she even missed _that_. "Calleigh, that's insulting. I was a CSI, you know."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Fine, play coy, see where it gets you."

Calleigh caught something foreign in his tone. Was Speed warning her? "What do you mean?"

"I mean look at me, Cal. You know how much time I wasted not letting myself be happy for…" he stopped and shook his head, "_stupid _reasons. When I think of all the things I could've done, all the things I should've said…" Speed fastened her with a look that nearly made her blush. "I just would've done a lot of things differently…that's all."

She looked down at her hands, at a loss for words. "Things with Eric are complicated, Speed. It's not as cut and dry as you're making it seem."

"Then let me un-complicate them." He got up from the edge of her bed and walked to her dresser and the group of pictures there on display. From the bunch, he plucked a black and white picture of his two best friends. Natalia had taken it at the Christmas party the year before. Calleigh's hair was longer, Eric's was shorter—they were standing in a doorway, talking animatedly to one another, big smiles and a glass of champagne in hand. Above them, unbeknownst, hung a cluster of mistletoe. Calleigh smiled at the memory of Ryan pointing it out, the blush that had crawled to her cheeks, the chaste, gentlemanly kiss that Eric had dropped onto the corner of her mouth.

"You see this?" Speed asked, turning the picture so Calleigh could fully take it in. "These are two of my favorite people in the world—you know what I see? I see that they love each other. I see them making each other happy. That's all." He set the picture on her nightstand, facing her bed. "Nothing else really matters, Cal."

"But what about—"

"Calleigh," Speed laid his hand gingerly across her lips. "I've got the advantage, here. And I'm telling you…nothing else matters."

He sat next to her in silence for a few long minutes before she spoke. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Ask him to dinner…or for a drink…or to go out dancing some night…whatever you ask he's going to say yes."

She looked sideways at him. "Why is this so important to you?" she asked with a smile.

"I told you, you're my best friend. I want you to be happy."

"I am happy."

"Fine," he rolled his eyes. "Make yourself happi_er_…for me."

"Well wait, if I'm doing all this for you, what are you going to do for me?"

He looked incredulous. "Are you saying all of this isn't enough?" Calleigh raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms over her chest. Speed sighed. "I'll make sure it never rains when you're outside."

"Can you do that?"

"Of course I can."

Calleigh laughed and wondered for a moment if her heart really could burst from missing someone so much. She sobered after a moment and the silence lapped over them again. Calleigh reached over and put her hand in his. "You know, I never got used to not having you around."

He squeezed her fingers tightly. "I miss you too."

_x0x0x_

When Calleigh awoke a few hours later, she was alone. Although she searched—as she did every time Speedle visited her in her dreams—for some trace of him in her room, she found none, and that familiar feeling of emptiness once again took up residence in her heart.

As she was blow-drying her hair, Calleigh's eyes fell on another picture—this one of Eric, Speed, and herself. She smiled, a renewed sense of conviction bubbling inside of her. She clipped her pager to the waist of her pants and grabbed her suitcase and purse.

She'd taken two steps out of her condo when the skies opened up and began tossing down buckets of rain. Calleigh stopped and glanced upward, her clothes instantly soaked through. "That's cute, Speedle." But even still, a smile tugged on her lips.

It was moments like these that helped her miss him just a little less.

--

a/n: Is it safe to say I'm addicted to Speed? Who doesn't love him?


End file.
